Holding on to the Ranch:
Don Lumbardy
Don Lumbardy was born in 1948 in Mesa County, just 20 miles west of the ranch he stands on today. Lumbardy Ranch is nestled north of the Gunnison River, several miles north of the 209,610-acre Dominguez Escalante National Conservation Area, and at the western foot of the Grand Mesa National Forest. Looking out across his home pasture, Don explained how he believed in the connectivity of food, the land, and human health, right from the start. Throughout his life he watched as development endangered his values, vastly changed his surroundings, and altered the way of life he knew and loved.
Don always knew he wanted to be a farmer and rancher. He remembered waking up early to help his dad with the cattle and the cool, dry, high desert chill on his face. He recalled helping his mom pull weeds in the garden in the late afternoon, the sun beating down on his back while his hands slid through the soil. He said it was moments like these, the peace and quiet of the ranch, working with his hands, and living off the land that made him want to follow in his family’s footsteps. Don is a fourth-generation rancher and it shows. His hands, cracked and full of a lifetime of hard work, rest on the trunk of a box-elder tree in his home pasture.
“The year I was 13, my parents had an opportunity to trade our small farm in for this much larger ranch in the high desert mesas and valleys at the western foot of the Grand Mesa National Forest,” Don said. “There were many challenging years trying to hang on but both my parents were children of the Great Depression and hardship was all that our family ever knew.”
Don’s upbringing on the ranch coincided with one of the biggest shifts in agriculture to date.
“All of a sudden, it just felt like you needed a million dollars worth of equipment to be able to farm, or stand a chance to make a living,” Don said.
Don said this focus on quantity over quality began to echo throughout the high desert. Don recalls Earl Butz coming to power as the Secretary of Agriculture in the 1970s, right as Don was getting more involved in the long-term planning on the ranch. As an agricultural economist, Butz saw the profitability of economies of scale and consolidation. In other words, farmers and ranchers with bigger operations would maximize profits and minimize loss by implementing practices like monoculture, pesticide use, and scaling up. Butz is credited for encouraging farmers to plant “fence row to fence row” and for coining the phrase “get big or get out.” That ideology changed the course of American agriculture. Between 1969 and 2018, we've seen a 12% increase in the average farm size and a 26% decrease in the number of farmers.
When Butz came to power, he helped change the policy that had been in place to stop prices from falling too low and hurting farmers or jumping too high and pinching consumers.
Before Butz, when farmers began to produce too much and prices began to fall, the government would pay farmers to not plant on some of their acres. The idea was that leaving fields fallow would push prices up the following season. When prices were on the verge of being too high, the government’s payments to farmers would stop, and farmers would go back to cultivating on the land they set aside. Additionally, the government would purchase excess grain from farmers and store it to help when prices were too high.
Under Butz’s plan to “get big or get out,” farmers and ranchers spent the 1970s taking on debt to buy more acres, more seeds, more machinery to manage those new acres, and more pesticides and fertilizers to maximize the gain from those fields. The debt accrued was planned to be paid off over time, as big profits from big production would come to fruition.
In the 1980s, the fragility and shortsightedness of Butz's plan was exposed and a farm crisis erupted. As farmers over-produced, the market collapsed under them. Prices plummeted and farmers fell behind paying their loans, causing interest rates to spike and farm incomes disintegrated. At this time, thousands of farms and ranches went under.
Don remembers feeling those pressures of the "get big or get out" ideology encroaching on his home county. Don said the impacts of that mentality vastly shaped practices in his community. He witnessed neighbors putting everything they had into “scaling up,” and he saw his own parents influenced by the policy enveloping the time.
“I watched my parents do things differently than I would have done things,” Don said. “My mom’s main focus was the garden and she utilized pesticides because that was what people up top preached.”
He said it went back to maximizing production regardless of quality.
Don’s father was able to lease out the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land to keep his herd fed and maintained. That lease was essential to the operation. Without it, “scaling up,” purchasing more cattle and land on credit could have bankrupted the family.
“We had a grazing allotment with both the BLM and the Forest Service that were attached to the ranch,” Don said, “my father had to sell the forest permit to pay off our banknote with the Federal Land.”
Today, only a small BLM grazing allotment remains but due to changes that were made by the BLM, Don has that permit leased to a neighbor.
Using leases rather than buying land for their cow-calf operation, Don’s family was able to hold on to their way of life. He said a lot of his neighbors and family friends, weren’t as lucky.
“A lot of farmers and ranchers in this area felt they could no longer work the land in the ways they had for generations,” Don said. “The smaller, family ranches and farms went under.”
Don watched as neighbors and friends closed up shop. The money to be made in agriculture felt like it just wasn’t there. Don said many families in the community sold their land to new developers.
“This county looks a lot different than it did when I was growing up.”
Driving towards Don’s place along highway 50, the high desert landscape is still vast, but the evidence of new construction and freshly built homes is everywhere.
Don felt the pressures of “get big or get out” through pivotal years on the ranch. Don left the ranch for a short while in his early 20s but returned after getting married. Unfortunately, his marriage was short-lived and his ex-wife moved to town with their two small daughters. Don painfully realized it was necessary he keep a full time, off-ranch job to pay child support and mortgage payments.
“I worked full time at several different jobs and then came home and worked another 8 to 10 hours on the ranch,” Don said. “For over 30 years I worked for others as well as myself on another full shift in the evenings or mornings until I was able to stay full time on the ranch.”
Don drove a truck for the county road department, worked construction for a farm machinery dealer, and took care of mentally disabled adults and children, all while dreaming of working on the ranch full time.
“I worked many different jobs to keep going...just as many farmers and ranchers have to too,” Don said.
61 percent of farmers and ranchers today, have had to work off-farm part-time to support themselves. 52 percent of U.S. farmers actually have a primary occupation and only farm part-time.
15 years ago, Don was able to return to work on the ranch full time.
“I wish I could have done this life full time when my body was in better shape for this work, but like most farmers and ranchers today realize, money is the biggest obstacle,” Don said.
Don’s love of the ranch is obvious. He has a story or an interesting fact for all of the trees around his home. He references it as if everyone else does too. Despite not working solely on the ranch for most of his life, the ranch is his life.
Today, Don’s hardest decision is who will continue the ranch once he passes on. Don’s youngest daughter lives a few miles away and helps out on the ranch when she can but she works full time coding medical procedures for insurance purposes for several hospitals. Her son, Don’s grandson, enjoys helping out on the ranch when he can but is not sure he wants to make a career in agriculture.
“My daughter and my grandson do come and help when they can but I do not know if either or both of them will be able to carry on with the ranch when I am gone,” Don said.
Like so many farm and ranch families, the trials and tribulations endured over the last four decades are a victory but also a warning to the next generation.
When Don moved home to the ranch full time, he looked around and didn’t recognize much. New homes were constructed and hobby ranches were put up. Land that once supported multiple generations and multiple families was consolidated into mega-ranches and mega-farms.
Don said shortly after moving back he was approached by a developer and told he could make about two million dollars selling his land to create a subdivision.
“Realtors thought I was crazy for putting all of the ranch property in a permanent conservation easement after both of my parents passed away,” Don said. “I was not going to allow this ranch to be destroyed after all the years of hard work and struggle that my parents and myself worked so hard for. Money will make life easier but it does not buy happiness.”
Don was finally home and no amount of money could deter him from the place he had dreamt of for the last six decades. Don felt comfort in the familiarity of the early morning, high desert chill on his face as he rose for chores and the late afternoon sun beating on his back as he restored his mother’s garden to its original glory.
